Page 100 of My Turn
Still, the silence didn’t make sense. He was obsessed. That didn’t just go away, right? I might have chalked it up to a guy getting off on fucking with a girl, then leaving when he got what he wanted, but he’d gone too deep for it to be that simple. He knew everything, had gotten into my house, left my favorite candy around…
I thought back to the day he cleaned the bite on my shoulder. He’d known exactly where the alcohol was. Maybe he’d spent time snooping during all of those visits.
After one last glance down the hall, I retreated to my room and shut the door behind me. My hand covered my mouth while I tried to reason this out. Right now, I needed action. The emotional side of this could be dealt with later. It was easier said than done considering my eyes already burned and my mind was fit to fracture.
I didn’t know anything for sure. The more I thought about it, the crazier it sounded.
Chapter 37
Jayce
I may have gone off the rails. Just a tiny bit. The thing is, Mike had become a problem. A big one. I think we’ve learned what happens to problems.
He must’ve known he was in trouble because he was hiding out. I’d pulled a knife on him and he’d seen the crazed look in my eyes. He would have been an idiot if he went home.
Generally I wouldn’t involve anyone else in my less than legal activities, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I couldn’t leave him to his own devices. He could go for Alana again and I couldn’t always be around to protect her. It was pure luck that I’d been keeping an eye on her earlier. She told me I couldn’t come shopping with her because she had to buy my gift. What I heard was that I couldn’t go shoppingwithher, but I sure as shit could be around. What can I say? I was a little bit obsessed.
I thought the overt obsession would fade somewhat when we finally got together, but I felt more possessive than before. Every day, I was terrified of losing her. It seemed like the sort of bullshit the universe would pull- I’d finally have the woman of my dreams and something out of my control would take her away from me. Not fucking happening.
It was a good thing Mike wasn’t very clever. It was after midnight, but he finally came home. He looked in every direction before he hurried to the front door. If he thought a lock would save him, he was mistaken. I’d already been inside to set up. All he’d done was walk right into my trap.
With my mask and a pair of gloves on, I got out of my truck and walked casually to the door. It only took a minute for me to get it open. After locking it behind me, my gaze moved to the kitchen where a light was on. I leaned against the wall and waited.
Mike turned the corner with a beer in his hand. He stopped abruptly when he saw me standing there. It was dark, so he squinted as if trying to figure out if his eyes were deceiving him. Reaching up, I turned on the mask’s neon lights.
“Jesus,” he exclaimed, stepping back.
“I’ll give you one more guess.”
When I started toward him, he dropped the beer. The glass shattered, skittering across the linoleum. He turned around, aiming for the sliding door. I grabbed him by the back of the neck and hauled him toward the living room. He cried out when he stepped on the glass. By the time I had him where I wanted him, blood had begun to seep through his socks.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“I told you to guess.”
“Y-you’re Jayce, aren’t you?”
“You can call me Erebus. Right now, I’m not the good guy.”
“What does that mean?” he blubbered.
I grabbed his face with one hand, forcing him to look at me. His eyes were wide with fear and shone with the realization that he was at my mercy. When a tear slipped free, I felt a thrilling sense of satisfaction.
“It means you’ve caught the attention of a monster, Mr. Everhart. And I’m dying to draw blood. That’s not my intent, though.”
He let out a relieved breath. I shook my head with a small laugh.
“There are plenty of terrible things you can endure without losing a single drop of blood. Well, aside from your feet, but that was your fault.”
His face paled. I picked up the rope I’d left near the wall. He tried to back away from me, but unless he planned to crawl up the chimney, he had nowhere to go. I held the noose out to him and he shook his head.
“You don’t have a choice,” I pointed out. “If you don’t do it, I’ll just kill you. Work with me and I’ll give you a chance to… Well, not to redeem yourself because we know that’s hopeless. This is a chance to save your worthless ass.”
His hand shook as he took the noose from me. I tapped my neck and he whimpered as he put it over his head. I grabbed the rope and yanked on it, making him stumble backward. When it was taut, I pulled harder. His feet kicked out as he scrambled for a foothold.
I looked up at the metal beam I’d put in place. It was secured to studs on parallel walls, giving me the perfect spot to hang the bastard. The ceiling fan wasn’t reliable enough, which meant I had to get creative. The police might question it, but people would do weird shit when they felt like offing themselves.
Not yet, though, so I put a small stool beneath his feet and tugged so that the rope slid over the beam, tightening around him. Grabbing my own chair, I stood on it and started securing the rope to the beam. He grunted when he had to stand on his toes and almost lost his balance, but he managed to stay on top of it enough not to die, so lucky him, I guess.